For Part 2 of the 3-part summaries:
I’m including a little backstory for reference, but feel free to skip down to the 3 take-a-ways as I know it is a little lengthy 🙂
Part 2 – Some inner workings of my heart during the season:
After being in Thailand for the first week of training, leadership approached me to ask if I would be interested in serving as the squad’s logistic leader. I didn’t really know what this was, but I was excited for the opportunity to experience an added element of the race. Many of you may not have known about this part of my race because I didn’t really know how to talk about it. I wasn’t sure which of my feelings were excitement and which were pride. I didn’t want to speak about the experience from a place of pride, and, as I will soon share, later I didn’t want to speak due to fear and shame. That said, this role was entangled though out my whole race. It, as well as my relationship to it, the opportunities it gave me (both to succeed and fail), and the things it taught me about myself, holds the majority of the growth I experienced on the race. So here I will share the highlights of how that is true.
Essentially squad logistics are responsible for moving the squad from country to country, planning any squad debriefs or leadership development workshops (LDW), collecting and organizing the squad’s financial reports, and a few other things as needed. Debriefs and LDWs entail transportation to the chosen city, housing in that city, renting a meeting space in close proximity, and organizing lodging and local transportation for any staff that flies out to serve. I shared these responsibility with my co-leader, Sang. Sang was, at the time, a 35 year old Korean man who had spent 10 years working in finance prior to abandoning all, and, honestly, he intimidated the heck out of me.
I spent the first 6 months feeling like I was failing at absolutely everything. I felt like he was more experienced, better prepared, better at executing his job, and all around more respected by our squad. As much as I tried to hide it, this showed a lot. I was consistently anxious and would often stay up all night working on our responsibilities. At times, my lack of sleep and added stress made me irritable and over emotional, far from a benefit to my team or ministry.
Aside from all this, logistics was an incredible gift that empowered me to try things that I might fail at and to deal with unexpected complications while 25 people look to you to know what to do. I had to overcome my fear of speaking in front of crowds, trust myself to make decisions for others and live with the consequences of those decisions, and learn to balance a large work load while accepting that resting is a need and not something that makes you weak. Most days it was fun, challenging, and life giving. Plus, it began the process of teaching me to let go of perfectionism, performance, and finding my identity in what people thought of me.
However, in month 8 of my race it began to teach me something different. At the beginning of month 8 I was asked to step down from my position and ‘just enjoy the race’. However, at the time, what I heard was “you’re fired”, “you’re a failure”, and “you are no longer wanted – in this role or on this squad”. It sounds dramatic I realize, but this is honestly how I felt. Therefore, the news led me into the hardest month of my race. It took me to a place of darkness I didn’t know I could experience.
Thankfully, in the Lord’s goodness, I learned of my demotion after walking through a season of deep intimacy and hunger for the Lord. I knew He was calling me to ‘choose in’ (a topic I blogged about during month 7 in Romania). Yes, my initial response was to absolutely choose the heck out. I wanted nothing to do with anyone on my team or squad. I was hurt and angry and confused. But, praise God, I was hearing His voice clearly and rested in Him as my friend. He gently broke me even more as he walked me through deep humility, uncomfortability, and learning what it truly looked like to not need to defend myself, but rather to let the Lord defend me. Great lessons, but lessons that can only be learned from a place of overwhelming brokenness.
As I walked out what it meant to be on the squad without doing logistics, I walked through a lot of pride. In the face of what I recognized as such, I did everything in my power to remove it from myself. I tried to be the very last, the very least, and the very lowest in everything I did. But after a good month of that, I had diminished myself to something I didn’t even recognize. I believed in my heart that I was all those things. I believed I was the least valued human on my squad, that my words didn’t matter at all, and that my thoughts and feelings were illegitimate. I even considered leaving our squad, not because I wanted to, but because I thought that is what everyone around me wanted. The thing is though, it was all in my head!
On some intellectual level I knew this was false, but I didn’t feel at power to dispel it. While my inner despair was becoming increasingly more evident, I still believed I was “keeping it together” and I had absolutely no desire to let down my image or let anyone in.
**Fast forward to some take-a-ways of this:
1) True humility comes from a deep rooted confidence.
When a dear friend told me I was walking in ‘false humility’ I was both hurt and defeated. Seriously?! I’m trying to be the most humble human and you’re telling me I’m even failing at that?! What do you even want from me?!
Well, true to my condition, you can only play humility so long. The truth is ‘false humility’ is no more than relatively well hidden pride. When I first realized this I was also abashed. Pride? I am the farthest things from prideful! I don’t think I deserve anything.
The thing is, even though this was the track I told myself, I was still hurt each and every time my low position was confirmed. I showed a face of being happy to be there, but in reality I was crying out for someone to tell me that I didn’t belong there.
Jesus didn’t live as the servant of the servants because he believed that was all he was worth. He lived as such because He knew who He was. He was so confident in his identity as the Son of God that He was free to serve. His identity was in His Father, not who others cast Him as. Further, He was so confident in the identity of others as children of God that He knew serving them did not diminish Him at all. Rather, in serving them He invited all to see their worth.
Bottom line – I learned that only when I knew who I was as a daughter of God, could I serve from a place of love and not a place of searching for love.
2) We are hardwired for community and it is OK to need them.
Sometimes we NEED community. We were created to exist inside of it. God Himself exists in the community of the trinity. Yes, Jesus is our first go to, but it is okay to need others. In fact, there is great strength and humility in acknowledging this and seeking help. Sometimes the voices in our head are so loud that we NEED someone else to speak over them until we regain our strength.
I had believed so strongly that my identity was in logistics. I believed I was only wanted by my squad when I was serving my squad. The entire time I was serving them I was seeking their approval and gratitude. Without it, I didn’t know who I was. Honestly, I think this was something I fought with my whole life: I am the smart one. I am the athlete. I am the president of x. On and on and so forth…
Stepping out of the serving role forced me to realize that it is not what I do, but who I am that is valuable. This seems simple, but it was utterly revolutionary to me.
Walking into this space required a period of feeling complete alienated though. During that time I literally needed my friends to tell me I was wanted and loved. I literally needed them to invite me to eat with our squad because the voices in my head were so strong that I couldn’t make myself join them without an invite. This was incredibly embarrassing to admit, but letting them in and inviting them to love me in this way was the beginning of letting myself be seen. And it is only when we are truly known that we can be truly loved.
3) “You don’t have to know. You don’t have to fix it. You just have to be there.”
Arguably one of the strongest and wisest women on my squad, Jessica Gibbs, said this to me, and I will never forget it. In my struggle with perfectionism and my desire to keep up appearances I like to wait until I have all the answers and a plan of action, complete with responses to each plausible reaction before moving. The trouble is, sometimes life is new and there is no way to have all the answers and plan all the things. This would immobilize me because I was afraid to do something that I could fail at, that would make me vulnerable, or that could end with me more hurt.
After a steady month of my broken façade, Jess came up to me with this powerful statement, inclining me to move. It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay for it to be hard. It’s okay to need others. But sometimes you have to fight the uncomfortable and the fear. Sometimes you have to use every resource in your body and, at times, the borrowed strength of others and face the things that scare you the most.
You step into the relationship that you don’t know how to fix, and you admit that while you don’t have the answers, you care. You admit you care even if you’re scared they won’t care back. You let the broken areas of yourself be seen even before you know how to mend yourself back together. You show up to listen even when you don’t know what to say. You just be there – there in the discomfort, there in the awkward, there in the mess. Because the truth is that none of us have it all together, and admitting that you don’t gives others the freedom to do so as well.
